American Carnival

Costume and Class in Trump's America

The political heat of 2017 has finally boiled all the political chants down to their essence: "Fuck that shit!"

More than a thousand juggalos—fans of the horror-art rap group the Insane Clown Posse—chanted this perfect refrain for our insane era in front of the Lincoln Memorial Sept. 16. Many of them were wearing clown paint on their faces or sporting tattoos or other signs that they are down with the clown.

Farris Haddad, who was introduced as "the motherfucking juggalawyer," was speaking when the chant broke out for probably the fifth or sixth time. "We're talking about freaking music here. If this is allowed to stand, and so far it has been, then we definitely don't live in a free society anymore," he says.

He was talking about the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has designated the juggalos as a "loosely organized hybrid gang"—a 2011 designation, which, juggalos say, has real consequences. One speaker at the rally, Jessica Bonometti, told how she was fired from her job as a probation officer in Virginia because she liked ICP-related photos on her personal Facebook page. Another, Crystal Guerrero, said she lost custody of her children for going to an ICP show.

"The Federal Court in Detroit actually tried to dismiss our case twice now saying basically that the FBI did nothing legally wrong by gang-listing thousands of normal everyday Americans."

"Fuck that shit," the crowd roared.

As Haddad told the crowd there's is a new trial date, on Oct. 11 in Cincinnati, Chris Lopez, a man with a Van Dyke beard, long hair, and a D.A.R.E. baseball hat walks up and hands a sweatshirt and a sandwich to Michael Troy, who wears a suit and a red toboggan hat and sports a handlebar mustache.

Troy came from California on an overnight flight on Friday night and is planning to leave Sunday morning. I asked him why he felt it was worth so much trouble and money.

"It's my family," he says. "Family has family's back no matter what. They are there for each other in times of need."

Maybe it is the California contingent that wears suits, because a guy from Oakland who calls himself Ape also sported a suit beneath his clown makeup. He's part of a group called Struggalo Circus, which describes itself as "a ragtag and messy coalition between radicals and juggalos."

One of Ape's comrades, a black man, carried a sign that read "Black Juggalos Matter." There weren't that many black juggalos. But, many juggalos and their supporters feel that class is at the center of the campaign against them.

"If juggalos are a gang then why aren't individual fraternities gangs?" says writer Camille Dodero at the rally. "What's the difference between those groups and juggalos? To me...the difference with those kids is that those kids' parents have money."

Another rally was going on at the same time, on the other side of the Mall. Organizers dubbed it the Mother of All Rallies—even though they were significantly outnumbered by juggalos. But with the exception of the Proud Boys, they don't look like the fraternazis with rich parents. Bikers for Trump, Three Percenter militia-guys, 4chan Kekistan shitposters, and Captain America cosplayers, each of which, like juggalos, is distinguished by its uniform. The militia guys, for instance, wear Under Armour camos and backpacks (and had guns in Charlottesville) and the "Western chauvinist fraternity" Proud Boys wear black polos with yellow stripes on the collar and the sleeves. And Captain America, well...

Pretty much all of the groups somehow saw themselves as "security." They were there to protect the free speech of Trumpists from the media and dreaded antifa.

As Drew Ambrogi, who works with No Justice No Pride, tried to get close to the counter protesters, one of the militia members told him to step back. "You're not a law enforcement officer," Ambrogi said on video.

"They work for me," a U.S. Park Police officer said of the militia man.

Scared? Fuck that shit.

But when Proud Boys came up looking like they wanted to fight, it seemed like the militia managed to calm them down and keep them away (they wouldn't talk to me).

That's when something kind of amazing happened. Inside the circle, one of the antifa activists named Iggy stood and talked for nearly an hour with one of the leaders of the militia.

"I've spent a lot of time trying to understand you guys, to understand the socialist mentality, to understand the communist mentality," the militia leader says. "To me you guys are my brothers and sisters...Why is there that difference? That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"It's a divide and conquer," Iggy says. "There's not that much difference." Some antifa groups, like Redneck Revolt, have been actively reaching out to the militia groups.

"A diversity of tactics," Iggy says later, at the juggalo march, where the presence of a black bloc made some people nervous. "These people, they're not fascists. They're definitely trying to distance themselves from the fascist movement."

He says that the further alienated these militia-types are, the more likely they are to side with the fascists.

At one point, as the Juggalos marched they chanted "One of us! One of us!"—a reference to the 1932 film, "Freaks." The juggalos, antifa, and the militia are all freaks. All three groups are hated and feared by the average Americans, the normies. But there are still very real differences.

A couple hours later, as the juggalos marched and a black bloc of antifa activists, with their faces covered, carried a sign that read "Whoop Whoop Fuck Nazis," I am overwhelmed by the sense that all of these competing rallies and their attendant fashions are the essence of our spectacle-oriented politics. If you dress in black you may be called a terrorist, and if you wear clown paint or the hatchet man, you may be classified a gangster. If you dress in a militia uniform, the cops will likely claim you as their own.

And, we are reminded again, as protests continued in St. Louis, if you are wearing a police uniform, you can still shoot black people and walk free.